Because of my musical theatre involvement, I wasn't going to be home for Mother's Day. My mom wasn't happy about this. She came into my room on Friday and pulled some sort of guilt-trippy stunt that made me feel terrible. To make up for it, I decided to make her a cake: Lemon poopy seed. Her favourite.
I found the "Encyclopedia of Home Cooking" on the shelf and checked the bookmarked pages. One of them was for poppy seed cake. There was no lemon in it. I know how to add lemon, but I really wanted a recipe that had both. Alas there was not. But, there was a lemon cake recipe which is the cake I made (with added poppy seeds).
Now before you judge me, this was my first time ever making a cake from scratch all by myself. I didn't completely screw it up, but my cakes didn't rise because of egg-white problems. As in I didn't separate them since one of my yolks broke and I thought, what the hell - let's hope this works without. FOR CAKES, ALWAYS FOLLOW THE RECIPE AS WRITTEN. The people who wrote them knew what they were doing.
So here is what I did (with proper egg-white instructions).
INGREDIENTS
-1 3/4 cups flour
-2 tsp baking powder
-two pinches of salt
-1/2 cup butter
-2 tsp lemon rind - You grate the skin off :)
-2 eggs
(SPLIT INTO YOLKS AND WHITES- DON'T LET YOUR YOLK BREAK EVEN A LITTLE BIT!!!!)
-1 cup sugar
-3/4 cup milk
-1/4 cup poppy seeds
I threw in 2 tsp of vanilla but it's optional
What to do:
-Take a paper towel and use it to smother 2 8' cake pans with margarine
-Cut two circles of wax paper that fit in the bottom of your pans and stick them down
-Preheat your oven to 350
-Sift the flour, baking powder, and salt together in a bowl
-In a separate bowl put the butter, lemon and attempt to beat them. It's hard. Add in the egg YOLK and sugar, that makes it easier. Then you add the milk and poppy seeds. Beat until smooth.
-Rinse the beaters then beat your EGG WHITES until they're solid enough to not move should you tip the bowl. It will be kind of like whipping cream.
-Pour your beaten egg whites over the rest of the batter.
-With a spatula fold the batter over gently (so you don't burst all the bubbles you've just created in the egg whites). Essentially you are just mixing by turning the batter over. (I hope this makes sense. I didn't do this because it made no sense to me in the recipe book).
-Pour your complete batter into the two cake pans and bake for 35 minutes or until a knife/toothpick dipped into the cake comes out clean.
Now by this time I had told my mother that I had made her a cake - which is how I found out what I did wrong and how to fix it. When the cakes were ready, I suggested using lemon pie filling to put in between the two cakes (stacked). Directions are found on the back of the package.
We had some whipped cream still left in the fridge so I whipped that up, then we added some of the pie filling. If you decided to do this, cool your filling. so it doesn't melt the cream.
Then you spread your filling on the
top of one cake, put the other on top, then spread your whip cream/lemon combo stuff on the top.It tastes delicious.
So go, have kitchen adventures.
Try this recipe. Impress your mothers.
Let me know how it goes.
COOK ON!
